Board Members

Daniel Akst

Daniel Akst has been reviewing novels and non-fiction regularly for two decades, including for Bloomberg, the Boston Globe, Civilization, Fortune, Fortune Small Business, the LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury, Smithsonian, the Village Voice, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Wilson Quarterly and others. He’s the author of two novels and two nonfiction books. His current term on the board ends in 2019.

Kerri Arsenault

Kerri Arsenault is a columnist at LitHub.com, and her work has appeared various publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, American Book Review, Kirkus, and Freeman’s. She is currently working on a book about Maine (Picador, 2019) where she is from. She received her MFA in Nonfiction Creative Writing from The New School. Literary Tweets @kerriarsenault. Her current term on the Board ends in 2018.

Tom Beer

Tom Beer is the books editor at Newsday, and a former editor at Out magazine. He can be found on Twitter @TomBeerBooks. He was elected president of the NBCC board in 2015; his term on the board ends in 2019.

Jane Ciabattari

Jane Ciabattari writes the Between the Lines column for BBC.com and contributes regularly to LitHub, NPR.org and others. She is vice president/online and a former president of the National Book Critics Circle, serves on the advisory board of The Story Prize and is a member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto. Her articles and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Guardian, Bookforum, Salon, the Paris Review, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, Ms., Poets & Writers Magazine, among others. She is the author of two story collections, Stealing the Fire (Dzanc Books, 2013) and California Tales (Shebooks 2014). She can be found on Twitter @janeciab. Her website is http://www.janeciabattari.com Her term on the NBCC board ends in 2019.

Anjali Enjeti

Online Committee

11014 Taconic Way
Johns Creek, GA 30097 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Anjali Enjeti is a freelance critic, essayist and journalist. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Star Tribune, Vice, NPR, NBC, The Guardian, Washington Post, the New York Times, and elsewhere. She lives near Atlanta, teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Reinhardt University, and can be found on Twitter @anjalienjeti. Her current term on the NBCC Board ends in 2020.

Lori Feathers

Lori Feathers is a freelance book critic who lives in Dallas, Texas. Her reviews are published in several online and print publications including The Rumpus, Full Stop, World Literature Today, and Words without Borders. She is a fiction judge for the Best Translated Book Award, and the book buyer and co-owner of Interabang Books in Dallas. Her current term on the board ends in 2020.

Michele Filgate

Michele Filgate is a contributing editor at Literary Hub and a freelance writer, essayist, and critic. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, O The Oprah Magazine, The Barnes & Noble Review, and many other publications. She teaches creative nonfiction for The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop and Catapult and lives in Brooklyn. Her current term on the NBCC board ends in 2018.

Daisy Fried

Online Committee

811 S. Hutchinson St.
Philadelphia, PA 19147 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Daisy Fried is the author of three books of poetry, Women’s Poetry: Poems and Advice, My Brother is Getting Arrested Again and She Didn’t Mean to Do It. The recipient of Guggenheim, Hodder and Pew Fellowships for her poetry, she contributes book reviews to the New York Times, Poetry, Threepenny Review and elsewhere, and is a member of the faculty of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. Her current term on the board ends in 2020.

Mary Ann Gwinn

Mary Ann Gwinn contributes to the Seattle Times’ Weekly Lit Life Column and is the co-host of “Well Read,” a nationally broadcast books and authors television program (http://www.wellread.org). She won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for coverage of the Exxon Valdez disaster. She’s on Twitter at @gwinnma. Her term on the NBCC board ends in 2020.

Laurie Hertzel

Laurie Hertzel is the senior editor for books at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the author of a memoir, “News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist,” published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2010 and winner of a Minnesota Book Award. Her work has appeared in Tri-Quarterly, the Chicago Tribune, Minnesota Monthly magazine, and many other publications in the United States, Finland, and Australia. She has an MFA from Queens University in Charlotte, N.C. Hertzel teaches at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Her current term on the NBCC board ends in 2019.

Yahdon Israel

Yahdon Israel is a 26 year-old writer from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, who writes about race, class, gender and culture in America. He has written for Avidly, The New Inquiry, LitHub, ESPNW, and Brooklyn Magazine. He graduated from the New School with his MFA in Creative Non-Fiction, and runs a popular Instagram page which promotes literature and fashion under the hashtag #literaryswag. His current term on the Board ends in 2020.

John McWhorter

John McWhorter teaches linguistics, philosophy and music history at Columbia University. He writes for Time, CNN, the Atlantic and various publications on language and on race issues, and is the author of Words on the Move, Doing Our Own Thing, Losing the Race, The Language Hoax, The Power of Babel, and other books. He has authored four audiovisual sets on language for the Teaching Company and spoken at TED twice. He also does Slate’s language podcast Lexicon Valley. His current term on the Board ends in 2020.

Michael Miller

Michael Miller has held positions at the Village Voice Literary Supplement, Spin Magazine, and Time Out New York, where he was the literary editor and lead book critic from 2005 until 2010. He is currently an editor at Bookforum, where he commissions essays and reviews about fiction, poetry, and cultural criticism. He also co-edits the magazine’s website. His writing has appeared in The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Bookforum, the Believer, the Texas Observer, and Post Road. His term on the NBCC board ends in 2018.

Walton Muyumba

Walton Muyumba is a writer and critic. His essays and reviews have appeared in Oxford American, The Crisis, NPR Books, The Chicago Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He’s the author of The Shadow and the Act: Black Intellectual Practice, Jazz Improvisation, and Philosophical Pragmatism (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2009). He is an associate professor of American and African Diaspora literature in the English Department at Indiana University-Bloomington. His term on the NBCC board ends in 2020.

Bethanne Patrick

NBCC VP/Technology Online Committee

1436 Layman St.
McLean, VA 22101-2128 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Bethanne Patrick is a writer and critic who is contributing editor at The Literary Hub. She contributes regularly to The Washington Post and NPR Books, and her work has appeared in O the Oprah Magazine, VQR Online, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Guardian, and many others. She tweets as @TheBookMaven and created the #FridayReads meme. Her latest book is an anthology: “The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections from 100 Authors, Artists, Musicians and Other Remarkable People” (Regan Arts 2016). She is working on a novel and lives near Washington, DC. Find her online at http://www.bethannepatrick.com Her current term on the NBCC board ends in 2019.

Katherine A. Powers

Katherine A. Powers is a freelance critic and the recipient of the 2013 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. She is the editor of “Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J.F. Powers, 1942-1963” (FSG, 2013). Her current term on the NBCC board ends in 2018.

Carlin Romano

none University of Pennsylvania
Annenberg School for Communication
3620 Walnut St.
Philadelphia PA 19104 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Carlin Romano is critic-at-large of The Chronicle of Higher Education and Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Ursinus College. His current term on the NBCC board term ends in 2019.

Mark Rotella

Mark Rotella is the senior editor at Publishers Weekly. He is the author of “Amore: The Story of Italian American Song” and “Stolen Figs and Other Adventures in Calabria” and wrote the introduction to the classic “Christ Stopped at Eboli” by Carlo Levi (all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Times Book Review, NPR.org, Wall Street Journal, Salon, Washington Post, Village Voice, and Saveur. His current term on the NBCC board ends in 2018.

Michael Schaub

Michael Schaub is a freelance journalist and a regular contributor to NPR, The Los Angeles Times, and Men’s Journal. His work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, and other publications. He lives in Austin, Texas. His current term on the NBCC board ends in 2019.

Clay Smith

Clay Smith is the editor-in-chief of Kirkus Reviews, the literary director of the San Antonio Book Festival and the former literary director of the Texas Book festival. His current term on the NBCC board ends in 2018.

Tess Taylor

Tess Taylor’s chapbook of poems, The Misremembered World, was selected by Eavan Boland and published by the Poetry Society of America. Her poetry and nonfiction have since appeared in The Atlantic, Boston Review, Harvard Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and The New Yorker. The San Francisco Chronicle called her first book,The Forage House, “stunning” and it was a finalist for the Believer Poetry Award. Her second book, Work and Days, was named one of the year’s 10 best books of poetry by the New York Times. Tess is on air poetry reviewer for NPR’s All Things Considered, and is is currently the Distinguished Fulbright in residence at the Seamus Heaney Poetry Centre of Queens University Belfast. Her term on the NBCC board ends in 2020.

Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor, co-editor of The National Book Review and Literary Editor at Large of the Chicago Tribune, has served as President of the NBCC. The co-author of “American Pharaoh,” she edited both the Books and Sunday Magazine sections of the Chicago Tribune, and was a national correspondent for Time magazine, based in New York and then Chicago. Her current term on the NBCC board ends in 2018.

Kate Tuttle

Kate Tuttle is a freelance writer who contributes regularly to the Boston Globe, for whom she writes a weekly column. Her reviews and essays have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Salon, and Dame magazine. A native Kansan and longtime Cantabrigian, she now lives in Decatur, Georgia. Her current term on the NBCC board ends in 2018.

Marion Winik

Longtime All Things Considered commentator (1991-2006) Marion Winik is the host of The Weekly Reader radio show and podcast. She reviews books for Newsday, People, Kirkus Review and other venues. She is the author of First Comes Love, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead and seven other books. Her monthly column at BaltimoreFishbowl.com has received the “Best Column” and “Best Humorist” awards from Baltimore Magazine, and her essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun and many other publications. She is a professor in the MFA program at the University of Baltimore. More info at marionwinik.com. Her current term on the Board ends in 2019.